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Don Quixote of La
Mancha

CHAPTER I

In a village of La
Mancha, the name of
which I have no desire
to call to mind, there
lived not long since
one of those gentlemen
that keep a lance in the
lance-rack, an old
buckler, a lean hack,
and a greyhound for
coursing. An olla of
rather more beef than
mutton, a salad on
most nights, scraps on
Saturdays, lentils on
Fridays, and a pigeon
or so extra on Sundays,
made away with three-
quarters of his income.
The rest of it went in a
doublet of fine cloth
and velvet breeches
and shoes to match for
holidays, while on
week-days he made a
brave figure in his best
homespun. He had in
his house a
housekeeper past forty,
a niece under twenty,
and a lad for the field
and market-place, who
used to saddle the hack
as well as handle the
bill-hook. The age of
this gentleman of ours
was bordering on fifty;
he was of a hardy
habit, spare, gaunt-
featured, a very early
riser and a great
sportsman. They will
have it his surname
was Quixada or
Quesada (for here
there is some
difference of opinion
among the authors who
write on the subject),
although from
reasonable conjectures
it seems plain that he
was called Quexana.
This, however, is of
but little importance to
our tale; it will be
enough not to stray a
hair's breadth from the
truth in the telling of it.

You must know, then,

that the above-named
gentleman whenever
he was at leisure
(which was mostly all
the year round) gave
himself up to reading
books of chivalry with
such ardour and
avidity that he almost
entirely neglected the
pursuit of his field-
sports, and even the
management of his
property; and to such a
pitch did his eagerness
and infatuation go that
he sold many an acre
of tillageland to buy
books of chivalry to
read, and brought
home as many of them
as he could get. But of
all there were none he
liked so well as those
of the famous
Feliciano de Silva's
composition, for their
lucidity of style and
complicated conceits
were as pearls in his
sight, particularly
when in his reading he
came upon courtships
and cartels, where he
often found passages
like 'the reason of the
unreason with which
my reason is afflicted
so weakens my reason
that with reason I
murmur at your
beauty;' or again, 'the
high heavens, that of
your divinity divinely
fortify you with the
stars, render you
deserving of the desert
your greatness
deserves.' Over
conceits of this sort the
poor gentleman lost his
wits, and used to lie
awake striving to
understand them and
worm the meaning out
of them; what Aristotle
himself could not have
made out or extracted
had he come to life
again for that special
purpose. He was not at
all easy about the
wounds which Don
Belianis gave and
took, because it
seemed to him that,
great as were the
surgeons who had
cured him, he must
have had his face and
body covered all over
with seams and scars.
He commended,
however, the author's
way of ending his
book with the promise
of that interminable
adventure, and many a
time was he tempted to
take up his pen and
finish it properly as is
there proposed, which
no doubt he would
have done, and made a
successful piece of
work of it too, had not
greater and more
absorbing thoughts
prevented him.

Many an argument did

he have with the curate
of his village (a
learned man, and a
graduate of Siguenza)
as to which had been
the better knight,
Palmerin of England or
Amadis of Gaul.
Master Nicholas, the
village barber,
however, used to say
that neither of them
came up to the Knight
of Phoebus, and that if
there was any that
could compare with
him it was Don Galaor,
the brother of Amadis
of Gaul, because he
had a spirit that was
equal to every
occasion, and was no
finikin knight, nor
lachrymose like his
brother, while in the
matter of valour he
was not a whit behind
him. In short, he
became so absorbed in
his books that he spent
his nights from sunset
to sunrise, and his days
from dawn to dark,
poring over them; and
what with little sleep
and much reading his
brains got so dry that
he lost his wits. His
fancy grew full of
what he used to read
about in his books,
enchantments,
quarrels, battles,
challenges, wounds,
wooings, loves,
agonies, and all sorts
of impossible
nonsense; and it so
possessed his mind
that the whole fabric of
invention and fancy he
read of was true, that
to him no history in
the world had more
reality in it. He used to
say the Cid Ruy Diaz
was a very good
knight, but that he was
not to be compared
with the Knight of the
Burning Sword who
with one back-stroke
cut in half two fierce
and monstrous giants.
He thought more of
Bernardo del Carpio
because at
Roncesvalles he slew
Roland in spite of
enchantments, availing
himself of the artifice
of Hercules when he
strangled Antaeus the
son of Terra in his
arms. He approved
highly of the giant
Morgante, because,
although of the giant
breed which is always
arrogant and ill-
conditioned, he alone
was affable and well-
bred. But above all he
admired Reinaldos of
Montalban, especially
when he saw him
sallying forth from his
castle and robbing
everyone he met, and
when beyond the seas
he stole that image of
Mahomet which, as his
history says, was
entirely of gold. To
have a bout of kicking
at that traitor of a
Ganelon he would
have given his
housekeeper, and his
niece into the bargain.

In short, his wits being

quite gone, he hit upon
the strangest notion
that ever madman in
this world hit upon,
and that was that he
fancied it was right
and requisite, as well
for the support of his
own honour as for the
service of his country,
that he should make a
knight-errant of
himself, roaming the
world over in full
armour and on
horseback in quest of
adventures, and putting
in practice himself all
that he had read of as
being the usual
practices of knights-
errant; righting every
kind of wrong, and
exposing himself to
peril and danger from
which, in the issue, he
was to reap eternal
renown and fame.
Already the poor man
saw himself crowned
by the might of his arm
Emperor of Trebizond
at least; and so, led
away by the intense
enjoyment he found in
these pleasant fancies,
he set himself
forthwith to put his
scheme into execution.

The first thing he did

was to clean up some
armour that had
belonged to his great-
grandfather, and had
been for ages lying
forgotten in a corner
eaten with rust and
covered with mildew.
He scoured and
polished it as best he
could, but he perceived
one great defect in it,
that it had no closed
helmet, nothing but a
simple morion. This
deficiency, however,
his ingenuity supplied,
for he contrived a kind
of half-helmet of
pasteboard which,
fitted on to the morion,
looked like a whole
one. It is true that, in
order to see if it was
strong and fit to stand
a cut, he drew his
sword and gave it a
couple of slashes, the
first of which undid in
an instant what had
taken him a week to
do. The ease with
which he had knocked
it to pieces
disconcerted him
somewhat, and to
guard against that
danger he set to work
again, fixing bars of
iron on the inside until
he was satisfied with
its strength; and then,
not caring to try any
more experiments with
it, he passed it and
adopted it as a helmet
of the most perfect
construction.
He next proceeded to
inspect his hack,
which, with more
quartos than a real and
more blemishes than
the steed of Gonela,
that 'tantum pellis et
ossa fuit,' surpassed in
his eyes the
Bucephalus of
Alexander or the
Babieca of the Cid.
Four days were spent
in thinking what name
to give him, because
(as he said to himself)
it was not right that a
horse belonging to a
knight so famous, and
one with such merits
of his own, should be
without some
distinctive name, and
he strove to adapt it so
as to indicate what he
had been before
belonging to a knight-
errant, and what he
then was; for it was
only reasonable that,
his master taking a
new character, he
should take a new
name, and that it
should be a
distinguished and full-
sounding one, befitting
the new order and
calling he was about to
follow. And so, after
having composed,
struck out, rejected,
added to, unmade, and
remade a multitude of
names out of his
memory and fancy, he
decided upon calling
him Rocinante, a
name, to his thinking,
lofty, sonorous, and
significant of his
condition as a hack
before he became what
he now was, the first
and foremost of all the
hacks in the world.

Having got a name for

his horse so much to
his taste, he was
anxious to get one for
himself, and he was
eight days more
pondering over this
point, till at last he
made up his mind to
call himself 'Don
Quixote,' whence, as
has been already said,
the authors of this
veracious history have
inferred that his name
must have been
beyond a doubt
Quixada, and not
Quesada as others
would have it.
Recollecting, however,
that the valiant Amadis
was not content to call
himself curtly Amadis
and nothing more, but
added the name of his
kingdom and country
to make it famous, and
called himself Amadis
of Gaul, he, like a
good knight, resolved
to add on the name of
his, and to style
himself Don Quixote
of La Mancha,
whereby, he
considered, he
described accurately
his origin and country,
and did honour to it in
taking his surname
from it.

So then, his armour

being furbished, his
morion turned into a
helmet, his hack
christened, and he
himself confirmed, he
came to the conclusion
that nothing more was
needed now but to
look out for a lady to
be in love with; for a
knight-errant without
love was like a tree
without leaves or fruit,
or a body without a
soul. As he said to
himself, 'If, for my
sins, or by my good
fortune, I come across
some giant hereabouts,
a common occurrence
with knights-errant,
and overthrow him in
one onslaught, or
cleave him asunder to
the waist, or, in short,
vanquish and subdue
him, will it not be well
to have some one I
may send him to as a
present, that he may
come in and fall on his
knees before my sweet
lady, and in a humble,
submissive voice say,
'I am the giant
Caraculiambro, lord of
the island of
Malindrania,
vanquished in single
combat by the never
sufficiently extolled
knight Don Quixote of
La Mancha, who has
commanded me to
present myself before
your Grace, that your
Highness dispose of
me at your pleasure'?'
Oh, how our good
gentleman enjoyed the
delivery of this speech,
especially when he had
thought of some one to
call his Lady! There
was, so the story goes,
in a village near his
own a very good-
looking farm-girl with
whom he had been at
one time in love,
though, so far as is
known, she never
knew it nor gave a
thought to the matter.
Her name was Aldonza
Lorenzo, and upon her
he thought fit to confer
the title of Lady of his
Thoughts; and after
some search for a
name which should not
be out of harmony
with her own, and
should suggest and
indicate that of a
princess and great
lady, he decided upon
calling her Dulcinea
del Toboso -she being
of El Toboso- a name,
to his mind, musical,
uncommon, and
significant, like all
those he had already
bestowed upon himself
and the things
belonging to him.